OmniFocus 2 – First Impressions

OmniFocus 2 is a very anticipated update to the excellent OmniFocus suite. In these last few weeks, I’ve been hard at work helping The Omni Group push OF2 to its limits to make sure it’s working well for its ultimate release.

I thought I’d take a moment to mention some immediate impressions …

Overall, its a very nice upgrade. There are several changes and improvements to the workflow that I am gradually learning and developing workflows around.

In particular, perspectives are a huge part of what make OmniFocus work for me. So, I’ve been keeping a close eye on their use in OF 2. So far so good, and there are indeed improvements.

As an example, the perspective selections we’ve come to know in the iOS versions of OmniFocus have made their way over:

Forecast mode is there along with Review and the other familiar options. The professional edition allows you to also create custom perspectives, much as we’ve had with OF1. Here you can see I’ve added Family, Communications, and Filing to the side bar.

I’ll find that I set up a series of perspectives to work through depending on where I am. For example, if I’m at the office, I’ll set up my “office only” then “office” perspectives. That way I get through things that can only be done at the office first, followed by things I can do at the office as well as at home.

You can also see that there have been changes to how perspectives can be designed:

Also, very neat is that you can get to a perspective’s settings quickly using the tool bar:

As much as I enjoy fiddling with the details of perspective settings, I prefer to work from a state of simplicity. I had worried that the simple lists I could create with OF1 would be gone. However, this is not true:

It’s been ok, actually. I worried that it wouldn’t be as wieldy, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. In some ways, the tasks actually feel “sturdier” though perhaps that is an odd way to phrase it.

How did you manage to get multiple perspective icons in the side bar? I have noticed that every time I switch perspectives, the current perspective icon in the side bar is replaced by the latest one selected. Is there a way to make certain perspectives “a favorite” and keep them on the side bar constantly like it is possible on iOS?

Hi Kourosh,
That’s exciting news. I’m glad to hear that Perspectives are alive and well. I couldn’t do much with the original OF2 beta since they weren’t really ready. I’ll download the new beta and give it a try when I get home later this week.

Things certainly look different, though. I would dearly love to have an updated version of Creating Flow with Omnifocus to lead me through the changes! I hope you’ll consider an update based on OF2.

Just checking: Does Omnifocus 2 have any team/collaboration features? I started out as an OF user back in the beginning, but more and more of my work requires close coordination of teams, with project tasks shared between various team members. So in recent years I’ve switched to collaboration-friendly apps — we’re currently using Asana — and even though none of them is as well designed or robust as OF, they get the job done. I keep hoping OF will see the collaboration light, and add a great networking feature. But it looks like that’s not the case. Can you confirm?

There’s no team/collaboration option that I can see. It would be interesting to see if The Omni Group eventually make a team option.

Personally, I really like the firm sense of individuality OmniFocus presents and wonder how this would be effected by incorporating others. Then again, my own work lends itself well to creating a context per person and a “waiting for” system of follow up.

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This product uses or is based on Getting Things Done® or GTD® Principles. It is not affiliated with, approved or endorsed by David Allen or the David Allen Company, which is the creator of the Getting Things Done® system for personal productivity. GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company For more information on the David Allen Company’s products the user may visit their website at www.davidco.com.

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